The Fiscal Cliff: Now What?

The House GOP leadership tonight put all its chips on a “Plan B” strategy to isolate Senate Democrats and force President Obama to make additional concessions to conservatives. Since Democrats such as Sen. Chuck Schumer once embraced setting the threshold for income tax hikes at $1 million, as Plan B would have, Republicans could theoretically protect themselves from blame if lawmakers fail to reach an agreement to avert the “fiscal cliff.”

But at least two dozen House GOPers refused to support leadership—either out of dogged anti-tax principles or fear of a primary challenge, or both. Plan B failed, and House Republicans are in a flutter.

The problem with Plan B, as I saw it Wednesday, was its stark imbalance of risk and benefit. If it passed—sure, maybe Democrats are put in the slightly awkward position of rejecting legislation some of them once favored. Maybe Obama’s White House is compelled to tilt further in your direction once negotiations resumed. Maybe the media and general public won’t blame you—or blame you as harshly—in the event that we do go over the cliff.

But if it failed … well, we’re seeing the fruits of that failure tonight. Speculation is rampant that Rep. John Boehner’s speakership is imperiled. President Obama’s negotiating hand has unmistakably been strengthened. If a deal is eventually struck with Congress, it will take the support of House Democrats and almost certainly be on terms less favorable than those the White House and Boehner had worked out as of early this week.

And yet conservative hardliners like Rep. Tim Huelskamp of Kansas, still smarting from having been booted from the House Steering Committee, are seemingly giddy:

On a separate note, Republican leadership thought they could silence conservatives when they kicked us off our Committees. I’m glad that enough of my colleagues refused to back down after the threats and intimidation, thus preventing the Conference from abandoning our principles.

These conservatives—well-intentioned, perhaps, but tactically foolhardy—are steering the Republican party and the movement into an iceberg that’s been in plain sight for weeks.

I’d say I’m in disbelief, but this clown show has been going on too long now to say that.

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45 Responses to The Fiscal Cliff: Now What?

Hmm, the Republicans aren’t in any weaker position now than they were before, although I can’t say that about the leadership. They will never win the battle of opinion polls because the media will always feed the public the Democrats line that it is the Republicans who are irresponsible in not agreeing to tax hikes instead of the Democrats who are intransigent in not agreeing to needed spending cuts. The fact is that taxes are going to go up for everyone on January 1, and at that time the Democrats will be as anxious as Republicans to pass a tax cut. That means they must come to the Republicans and get them to agree to terms on how and where to do so. The President is in the White House and the public, eventually, will hold him responsible for what happens to the economy. If the Republicans don’t like what the President is proposing, they don’t have to vote for it. As that means the President can’t get his bill through Congress, then he will have to move enough to satisfy at least enough Republicans to join with Democrats in the House to pass some bill to his satisfaction.

The fact that Plan “B”, which Boehner presented precisely because a number of Democrats said they would agree to it, couldn’t be submitted for a vote because the commitments weren’t there to pass it means the Democrats who previously said they would agree to it were the ones playing politics. The Republicans who weren’t going to vote for it simply maintained the position they had always had – keep the Bush tax rates in place or we won’t vote for it. There are other ways to get the budget under control and I, for one, will be happy to see sequestration begin January 1. It’s only a small taste of what the country will need to imbibe to cure our ailment.

conservatives aren’t conserving anything but their $. the republican party is a sad joke, that is only slightly sadder than the democratic party. when b obama thanks j lewis i want to vomit. a lot. mr lewis did not open doors for corporate shills, you sad excuse for a president.

This is the second time I’ve come over here from a Huffington Post link. I was impressed the first time and still am. The first time here, I read some articles. They were excellent in both writing and critical thinking.

I’m a Leftie, but I like a well-reasoned essay wherever I can find it. The HuffPost should link to your excellent publication more often.

Unfortunatly your living in the same fantasy world as Frodo Baggins if you think that the Dems will roll back come Jan. 1, If anything the Repubs are really boxed in and will have to come to some conclusion on their own to lower taxs to make the Tea Bagger friends happy. This will lead to what the President wanted months ago, it will just be forced from the position of lowering taxs and not raising them (God what a bunch of short sighted nit wits to not understand this!) but this aint our parents Republican party anymore.

Max – oh my.
I pray to God that most R’s believe as you do.
Because I’m a Democrat.

And I live “outside” The Bubble.
It’s not “going to go down” anywhere near where you are describing.

This is like Nov 6, 2012, where y’all are in some “other” zone, when everyone else sees clearly that Republicans will lose this battle, badly….

This “Plan B” move showed the world the “last flail” of a dying Republican Party. And played right into Obama’s hands.

I’m a Democrat, but believe in a strong 2-party system in America. The Republican Party has sunk to a level that it can not only Not win national elections, but it cannot articulate strategy to its own, nor control a body of Congress in which it hold the majority. I want to “win,” sure — but America is stronger when there is a real battle of actual ideas. Not stunts. Not stunts-that-fail.

This will not do.
Republicans must Evolve or die.
“Change” or keep losing elections for generations.

Why-O-why would Republicans thoroughly humiliate their Speaker this way? I’m not saying Boehner’s strategy would have worked, but dang!

Don’t bother telling me how I’ve “got it all wrong.”
Let’s just wait and see.
Like I told folks on Election Night….

House republicans have refused to work with house democrats on any legislation in 2 years and you somehow come to the conclusion that democrats were just going to sign off on whatever Boehner came up with? Lol, that makes no sense.

Harry Reid and Obama both said Plan B would be DOA yet Boehner went on with it anyways without the votes from his cacus to pass it and somehow Democrats are playing politics?

Let’s just be real here. The Republican party is in trouble. It’s not the media’s fault and it’s not the Democrat’s fault. The only people you can blame are the movement conservatives in the party that refuse to accept reality. Republicans are lost. The party has purged all the moderates, thus there is no one left to tell you how out of step the party is with the nation.

Right now, the Tea Party holds enough power in the Republican Party that it can bring the process of governing to a halt, but lacks the vision and maturity to form the kind of compromises that make government work.

That inability to govern – coupled with a hyper-partisanship that has grown like a cancer over all governing structures has left us with an enfeebled governing process.

Of course, separating from the Tea Party will make both of them minority parties – but that should break the hyper-partisanship too. The Democrats will fracture into their own liberal, moderate, and conservative factions and then people who know how to achieve the art of what is possible can restore our civic institutions.

The perfect is the enemy of the possible – which is to say that by holding out until everything is perfect, you achieve nothing that you could have simply by making things better a bit at a time. I don’t agree with the Tea Party’s idea of perfection – and I see that their perfectionism is hurting us all.

Obama was ready to gut Social Security (which the GOP has wanted to do since the New Deal was passed) and exclude the first $400,000 per year income from NOT a tax increase but simply a return to a rate that was too low to begin with.

But that wasn’t good enough for the lunatics in the GOP. Well contrarty to what conservatives and Mr. Obama might believe most people in this country are not as concerned about the so called “fiscal cliff” (its’ really more of a gentle slope) than they are about a parasitic class of “job creators” who neither create jobs nor contribute in any other manner in return for their bloated incomes.

Only Republicans could be foolish enough to believe Obama is going to suffer for not making a deal. But he may have to pay for having offered too much.

The GOP may have to join in a real bi-partisant negotiating to survive without the Tea-Party votes. This may put the Speaker in peril but more importantly the GOP may be setting in motion an uncontrollable force will cost the GOP the House majority in 2014, not to mention marginalizing the GOP for a decade or more.

Earlier we had McConnell filibustering his own proposal, and now this? It’s almost unbelievable. The GOP seems to be in full self-destruct mode. It’s like watching a building implode in super slow motion. Will the next charge to go off be the one to bring it crumbling to the ground, or will they need more?

The modern GOP has been hijacked by radicals, whose main goal is to oppose President Obama at every turn. Their insistence on doing this, has cost them a lot of position, and will continue to do so. Yet, they remain undeterred. As Arnold Schwarzenegger tried to warn the GOP publicly, they are going “…Off the cliff, all flags flying…”. Ahnuld nailed it.

William F. Buckley (RIP) would have been appalled at the stupidity now running rampant in the GOP. Buckley was as Conservative as anyone could get, but he had the intellectual horsepower not only to debate any opponent, but to advise action which would be successful in the long run……he would never have invited the GOP to make Martyrs of themselves, which they are now doing.

I used to be a Republican voter, but I’ll be straight upfront about it: Ever since the disastrous 8 years of the Bush Presidency, I will never again vote GOP in my lifetime. Bush’s Presidency, for me, became a bad dream. There was no Wisdom there. There was Hubris, mendacity and a stubbornness that appalled all but the staunchest Bush supporters. I would never vote GOP again, for fear that such a troupe would again gain power…..I view that as an unacceptable risk.

William, I’d like to see the “cliff” too (not just the cuts, but the taxes) but you’re wrong when you say the Rs aren’t in a weaker position.

It’s not going to be hard for O to get his tax cuts through at all. When taxes go up on Jan 1 he’ll travel around the Country shouting to anyone who will listen “I’ll sign a bill to lower taxes on the 98% today, if the Republicans will get it to my desk today!”.

The polls will show that the public overwhelmingly blames the Rs. Then one week. Two, tops. And they’ll pass his “clean” bill to lower taxes for everyone except the top two percent. No spending cuts at all.

One good thing about all this? The last “this clown show has been going on too long” line made me lol. And these days we need all the laughs we can get.

It now remains for one courageous Republican leader (NOT Johnny Boehner) to stand up and formally evict the t-party stooges that infect their party like a disease, and invite what remains of the moderates to come forward and begin rebuilding. Their leadership fiasco, plus going over the cliff, (which most Americans are prepared to blame them for,) will shatter the them like a brittle tea party cup. Let it come down!

Watching the absolute (and I use that word quite deliberately) intransigence of the Tea Party (I think of them as the Tealiban, but I’m just a humanist librul), it strikes me that perhaps the various states should start administering sanity tests to anyone who intends to run for office.

The G.O.P. is marginalizing itself out of existence. Good riddance! They and their ignorant Tea Party leaders (the REAL Tea Party would have been rolling over in their graves at the corporatist-supporting modern version) can go the way of the Whigs. Than, the Democratic Party will be exposed as the moderate-Republican Party they’ve become and we can get a true progressive alternative.
The whole Fiscal Cliff debate is a complete scam, of course, a debate of incremental adjustments in just 17% of the Federal Budget.
It’s a complete scam in a much larger way too, since America is Not Broke! as I outline in my article on Huffington Post, where I show how to find or reallocate $100 Trillion (no, not a typo, and not pulled out of the air either, but based on proven and tried reforms in the past and present). See here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-baker/america-is-not-broke_1_b_1904062.html

If Boehner can’t deliver a majority of his caucus then the deal is going to be on the House Democrats terms. Why would anyone allow the Republicans to dictate the details of the deal if they can only get 30-40 Republican votes for it. Boehner and the House Republicans have just ceded the debate over to Obama, if they refuse to come to his terms they’re going to get blamed for the whole mess.

House GOPers refused to support leadership—either out of dogged anti-tax principles or fear of a primary challenge, or both.

“Dogged anti-tax principles” are stupid. No one’s talking about reimposing the tax rates of the dystopian nightmare that was Eisenhower’s presidency in the 1950s. We have the second lowest taxation & spending in the OECD, and we’re dealing with a proposal to return some rates to surplus-era levels.

The House GOP “consists half of people who think like Michele Bachmann and half of people who are afraid of losing a primary to people who think like Michele Bachmann”.

Speculation is rampant that Rep. John Boehner’s speakership is imperiled.

Rep. Boehner rode a wave of fiery ignorance to the speakership (“hell no!” he tearfully barked on the floor of the House before the Affordable Care Act vote, in lieu of offering rational policy or reasoned discourse). Now that same policy-averse tribalism is running against him. Wow, who could have predicted?

We must not forget that there is no longer any essential difference between House Democrats and Republicans. They are all beholden to the lobbyist with the most ties to the biggest money.
Sorry, conservatives, but your “opponents” across the aisle are more your brothers than you realize. You’re all slaves.

The problem for the last 4 years has been that the GOP has not had enough power to build anything in accord with what their own ideology demands.

For decades now, instead of trying to make their case openly to the American people and live with the results, they have chosen to pursue re-election by seeking the assistance of powerful allies, who spend big $$$ to smear their opponents. As a result, they have now lost whatever philosophical underpinnings they once had and have devolved into a wrecking crew who callously, are willing to destroy everything in the mistaken belief that they will be the ones who will get to pick up the pieces.

Make no mistake about it – the American people are not stupid and will not tolerate it should they succeed.

First, I want to say how much I appreciate reading reasoned discourse; it seems to be a rarity today.
Secondly, I concur that the Republicans of today bear no resemblance to those I knew or watched growing up in Chicago. I am a life long Democrat. However, my Irish father taught me to always vote for the person not just the party person who might be the party hack. It troubles me to see such an estrangement existing in our Congress today. The Tea Party members appear to be throwbacks to the “Know Nothing Party” of the 19th Century.

The Republican Brand is tarnished, first by Bush and his failures to prosecute the wars effectively and then by people who go very extreme and very public against things that are considered “Mainstream”.

This has a halo effect and makes other things attempted by Republicans seem off as well.

Conservatism in America is also dying. This is something that Conservatives sort of have themselves to blame for but also demographics and immigration. Conservatives have been blind sided and myopic and so they are now the minority and shrinking.

That will continue.

The future is: Libertarianism vs Socialist/Progressive/Unionism.

Neither of these two options is very attractive to me. I am firmly Conservative and do not like either Libertarianism or Socialist/Progressive stuff.

But that IS the future. The sooner Conservatives figure this out, the sooner they can get back in the game. Sure — they won’t play the game that they want to play. But at least they will have some influence.

I am sorry guys — we have lost. We need to understand this and move on.

Meanwhile, I do not think the Speaker is losing hold on his office. I also think we should let the dive off the cliff take place. Just take the plunge. Everyone gets hurt in that deal, but Obama and Dems will take the largest brunt. of it.

The fact is that taxes are going to go up for everyone on January 1, and at that time the Democrats will be as anxious as Republicans to pass a tax cut. That means they must come to the Republicans and get them to agree to terms on how and where to do so.

This statement is premised on the idea that Republicans have some sort of wiggle room to oppose a middle class tax cut.

“the Democrats who previously said they would agree to it were the ones playing politics.”

Ah … and Jon Stewart is responsible for the Sandy Hook shooting. Ignorance is Strength; Freedom is Slavery. …

You want to know why the GOP is in the mess it is? Read no further than this sentence. The party that advocates personal responsibility for the poor, the old, the disabled and minorities, is forever blaming everyone else for its problems. Obama, the media – now, a handful of Democrats who, HEAVEN FORFEND! are playing politics, in Congress, over the Budget, of all things.

Republicans just can’t get the complete impoverishment of the working people of America done fast enough, and they can’t agree on how to do it. Creating conditions which will make everyone desperate enough to settle for third-world wages, with no benefits, government or otherwise, Is hard to do when people actually notice that that’s the eventual result of Republican policies. Ayn Rand was just a fantasy novelist, after all, not a particularly competent sociologist, economist, or philosopher. The stuff just doesn’t work.

Plan B was always pure posturing to give Boehner more leverage (he had none and now he is utterly irrelevant) and the GOP started an internal civil war over an illusory bill.

This holiday season Republicans rejected the President’s plan, rejected their own plan, McConnell filibustered himself, the Tea Party had another tantrum, and then Boehner sent everyone home for the Holidays. I would be embarrassed to have accomplished so little for so many, with so much at stake.

Who now can speak for the GOP House with any real authority? Did Boehner not count his votes (again) before he walked out onto the ledge or was he set up by Cantor et al?

The country needs a coherent challenge from a reasonable conservative viewpoint. The GOP has become a collection of warring religious factions under the banners of Norquist and the NRA.

We should expect more from our Representatives than just cowering before Freshmen congressmen who do not really wish to govern–they just seem to want to burn the place down.

I don’t understand all the aversion to the Tea Party among those who want to restore fiscal sanity to our government. Among Republicans and Democrats (and around here even Democrat politicians will line up with the Tea Party) they are the only people in Washington who are willing to actually cut the government down to a size we can afford, as opposed to slowing the rate of increase. It is the “realists” who want to let Obama lead the way back to Clinton taxes and double George W. Bush spending who are living in a dream world. Ron Paul said all this in 2007 when the Tea Party was formed to start the “money bombs” that propelled his campaign into the national political culture. While there was a brief highjacking by the minions of the military-industrial-security complex that gave the Tea Party a bad name of fiscal irresponsibility, as with the case of Grover Norquist, their hold has loosened and will soon be gone.

The thing to look for to measure Republican success is not the tax bill that will emerge in the next Congress. Whatever it is, it will not keep tax rates at the Clinton level, and Republicans can use the next campaign cycle to make further reductions part of their platform. The real fight needs to be over spending. And not relenting over the sequestration about to be implemented will be acid test. Shifting spending around, including cuts to entitlements which are not part of sequestration, is a point for negotiation, but the bottom line must be that total spending can’t exceed what is allowed by present law. Even greater cuts will be necessary in the near future if we are to avoid another fiscal cliff when time rolls around the debt ceiling will hit again. If the Republicans and Democrats don’t cut up Uncle Sam’s credit card, the Tea Party will become a real third party and may overtake the Republicans.

I don’t understand all the aversion to the Tea Party among those who want to restore fiscal sanity to our government.

Part of being a TAC reader is realizing that the government has never had “fiscal sanity,” the concept it self reeks of rationalism and top-down governance that rules by one faction’s “common sense.” The present problems are simply reiterations of historical problems; “the debt” represents hundreds of years of tradition and decisions and is more authentically “American” than any passing fetish ideology as extemporized by teevee personalities and bankrolled by petroleum billionaires.

Among Republicans and Democrats (and around here even Democrat politicians will line up with the Tea Party) they are the only people in Washington who are willing to actually cut the government down to a size we can afford

Not as long as you’re using puling epithets like “Democrat politicians.”

“I don’t understand all the aversion to the Tea Party among those who want to restore fiscal sanity to our government.”

This is the same Tea Party whose members put up plackards saying, “Keep Your Government Hands Off My Medicare”? Or the same Tea Party who wanted to restore “fiscal sanity” by driving the US to renege on its debts? The “fiscal sanity” you are talking about – does that include also, perhaps, having the income to pay for existing liabilities? Would they REALLY agree to the dismantling of Farm Support and the military-industrial complex, or is just about sticking it to the old, the poor, the disabled and the unemployed? Does the Tea Party “fiscal sanity” include getting rid of corporate pork and tax breaks, or other economically nonsensical tax breaks?

That your post meandered back and forth between taxes and spending says a lot. I am not sure it is possible to talk about fiscal sanity as long as you argue in bromides, platitudes and dogma.

Mr. Dalton what I think you are missing is that nearly everyone paying attention thinks that while Austerity Now! is a great campaign slogan for the ‘keep government out of my Medicare’ crowd, it turns out to be pretty bad governance. There’s wide agreement that the ‘cliff’ — gentle slope, rather — will lead to recession. Not on January 1, but by summer or beyond.

Those European countries that embraced austerity last year and the year before don’t have much to show for it.

The problem isn’t the federal credit card. It’s what we’ve been charging on it: big tax cuts for gillionaires do a lot less good for us than putting money into the pockets of the actual job creators in our economy: working people who spend their money mostly locally.

“Conservatism in America is also dying. This is something that Conservatives sort of have themselves to blame for but also demographics and immigration. Conservatives have been blind sided and myopic and so they are now the minority and shrinking.”

Immigration shouldn’t have done anything to hurt conservatism. Those who come to this country either come from cultures that are very conservative or are running away from more socialist countries. Either way, they very much welcome conservative ideals.

The Republican party, however, has been not only having a hard time welcoming those groups, but also has been hard pressed to represent conservative views in the first place.

Republicans had the strongest hand in 2011, right from the 2010 ‘shalacking’. That hand was squandered by the mess of the Keystone pipeline (I know if I’m not sure about a choice and you force me to choose NOW, I’ll say No by reflex too.) then forcing Sequestration and not following up on it.

The ‘cut deductions’ idea is 2 years too late. The ideas Republicans put in either had not a single carrot for the other side (when your plan requires killing the voice of half the country to pull it off, something is wrong) or was contradicted.

And not just here. Along with the before mentioned ideas, let’s also put in the medicare cuts from Ryan’s plan that turned from Perfect when Ryan wanted it to horrible when Obama wanted it. Let’s also remember the copyright paper that led to the firing of the author. I’ll even ‘go there’ and include Republicans health care plan from the 90s that only became hated once it was renamed Obamacare.

BAH, even the sequestration can be added: it was bipartisan until we reached the deadline, then it was ‘Obama’s idea’.

So yes, now that this has gone through, it’ll be Obama ‘coming to the rescue’ to ‘cut taxes for most and raise taxes for no one’. Spending? What of it, other than Defense? Disagree? You just dumped about $2500 in taxes to a family making 50k. Do you WANT that? No? Then sign.

Meanwhile, private industry is facing outright hostility from their accounting teams over the tax mess you dumped on them (switching tax matters mid way through like this is a nightmare), those under unemployment just lost income they won’t get back, and Obama gets credit for “stopping Republican plans from making everything worse.”: the hidden slogan that won him two elections.

I thought that “Plan B” was only used to prevent implantation after the strange bedfellows engaged in coitus.

What is the purpose of having a Republican Party if they simply do the identical things the Democrats do? This is why I wonder at the complaints about the (already mostly co-opted) Tea Party and the other conservative members. “Go Along” means go along with the bipartisan crony capitalism, take the lobbyist’s bribes, etc.

The complaint seems to be that there may be more people of principle in the House and Senate than there were righteous men in Sodom and Gomorrah. Perhaps they need to all go on vacation at the same time during a session and see if there is any tectonic activity.

I have considered myself a conservative for a long time although not necessarily a Republican. I have carefully read many of the posts here and to be frank, I do not completely understand what the Republicans are doing. It appears that it is more about hatred for Obama, the Democratic Party and even John Boehner than anything else. I see myself as a conservative but do not believe the world will end if people making over $400,000 have to pay an extra 4% on their income over $250,000. After all, everyone gets the tax break no matter what their income. It reminds me of the debate in which not one of the candidates would accept a 10:1 ratio of expenditure cuts v. tax increase. I am having a hard time understanding this. There ARE conservatives that make less than $250k. I have no interest in protecting the super rich. My own experience is that they can take care of themselves pretty well. Lets step back a few feet and look at what we are doing.

“All spending currently planned is spending authorized by currently law. That’s where spending comes from. It’s in the Constitution.”

By “current law” I am referencing the Budget Control Act of 2011, which mandates spending be cut across the board by a certain percentage, with certain exceptions, on January 1. That is the level of spending that Republicans need to insist not be exceeded. Arguments over the Bush tax rates vs. the Clinton tax rates are a side show. Whether the government increases its draw on the economy by taxing or borrowing it’s still bad news and it is what has to stop. Even Warren Buffett, an Obama supporter, says that the deficit (and hence spending by the government) needs to be held to a certain percentage of GNP. That would be a good “bipartisan” start.

“This is the same Tea Party whose members put up plackards saying, “Keep Your Government Hands Off My Medicare”? Or the same Tea Party who wanted to restore “fiscal sanity” by driving the US to renege on its debts? The “fiscal sanity” you are talking about – does that include also, perhaps, having the income to pay for existing liabilities? Would they REALLY agree to the dismantling of Farm Support and the military-industrial complex, or is just about sticking it to the old, the poor, the disabled and the unemployed? Does the Tea Party “fiscal sanity” include getting rid of corporate pork and tax breaks, or other economically nonsensical tax breaks?”

When I speak of the Tea Party I speak of Ron Paul and his supporters. If you’ve read his many policy statements, not only in the last campaign, but throughout his career, you will know he has no more use for Medicare or Farm Supports than the Military-Industrial Complex. None of it is in the Constitution and all of it is unwise and the reason we have a government justly called “Leviathan”. Too many people are dependent upon these hand-outs, to rich and poor alike, to dispense with them immediately, but we need to start down that road. The “fiscal cliff” we face January 1 requires cuts which are only a small step in that direction.

“Mr. Dalton what I think you are missing is that nearly everyone paying attention thinks that while Austerity Now! is a great campaign slogan for the ‘keep government out of my Medicare’ crowd, it turns out to be pretty bad governance. There’s wide agreement that the ‘cliff’ — gentle slope, rather — will lead to recession. Not on January 1, but by summer or beyond.”

What will lead to recession is our failure to have made these cuts in 2008, when we experienced the first major economic crisis. This is what Ron Paul predicted would happen if we passed the bailouts and subsequent stimulus bills trying to prop out an overexpanded and overindebted economy with government handouts of printed paper. We can put it off again, as we did then, but that simply means the day the crash comes it will be even greater. There will come a day when the credit of the United States will be zero, when the paper money will have to be printed so fast the Weimar Republic couldn’t have kept up, and when the military-industrial complex will be so bloated and so repugnant to the peoples of the world that our empire will collapse as did that of the Soviet Union. That is the path that Obama and Boehner and all of their economists and advisers are leading us. The Tea Party, which draws all its intellectual capital from Ron Paul and his followers, is the one force which is standing to stop it.

“Not as long as you’re using puling epithets like “Democrat politicians.”

Puling – I had to look that one up. It means “whining” or “whimpering”. I would say that would be an apt description of Republican politicians. For Democrats I favor “muling”.

The whole “fiscal cliff” debate would be transformed if we were to FIRST propose growing the pie of economic production before even discussing fiscal problems. For example, if instead of talking about budget deficits, we first fixed the trade deficit with a BALANCED TRADE law, then suddenly American manufacturing would get a $600 Billion annual influx of cash, re-diverted from the trade deficit to American GDP. By using a Buffet-Plan-style system of Import Certificates issued in exact amount of exports, it wouldn’t cost consumers or taxpayers a dime, it would be legal under WTO terms, and it would lead to millions of new mfg jobs and millions of additional multiplier-effect jobs.

After a year or two of that we ‘d have the tax base now missing, and we’d have drastically lower social safety net expenses. Then would be a much better time to revisit fiscal questions.

Moving on to social insurance, cuts to Social Security and Medicare would be a betrayal, something the Democrats are getting good at matching Republicans on, but definitely worthy of nothing but scorn and condemnation. Raising the age for Medicare eligibility would be a mortal blow to the program by saddling it with only the oldest, ie, most expensive participants. The REAL way to save Medicare would be to lower the age of eligibility to birth. By adding a few hundred million healthy people, the price per capita would plummet and the economy of scale would multiply.

Just another compliment from a liberal on the quality of the articles and commentary here. Going to sites like RedState or American Spector can be amusing, or scary, or both, but I’m about to promote this one to my Bookmarks Bar.